Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes

Last time I lived in Minneapolis I spent a lot of time at Bob's Java Hut, partly for the great people but mainly for the amazing Mexican Chocolate Mocha. That great flavor of chocolate & cinnamon together with a little extra vanilla is one of my favorites. This cupcake really seems to capture that flavor & it is one of the moistest cupcakes I've every had. Maybe just a little too moist as they didn't rise very much. (*see below for our fix for that)


Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes

2 sticks (1 C) unsalted butter
1/2 C Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 C water
2 C granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 C well-shaken buttermilk
2 T vanilla
2 C all purpose flour
1 t baking soda (*see below for suggested change to this)
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350. Put cupcake papers in your muffin tins. Melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, then whisk in cocoa. Add water and whisk until smooth. Remove from heat. Whisk in separately sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt into a bowl. Then sift again into the cocoa mixture and whisk until just combined (it will be a little bit lumpy). Fill cupcake papers to about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer or toothpick comes out clean. It's a moist cake, so don't worry if a few crumbs stick to your tester.
Allow cupcakes to cool.

Makes 24 cupcakes.

Adapted from Rebecca Rather's recipe from on Four Obsessions.

Most Mexican cupcake recipes I found just suggested dusting the cupcakes with powdered sugar but I really wanted a frosting & used this basic chocolate sour cream version.

Fudgy Sour Cream Frosting
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1-1/2 cups sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla

In a double boiler, or in a saucepan set over a pan of hot (not boiling) water, melt the chocolate chips, stirring until smooth. Transfer to a mixing bowl.

Add the sour cream and the vanilla and beat, with an electric mixer on medium speed, until smooth and creamy. Let cool just slightly - until the frosting begins to thicken. But don’t wait too long because it will quickly thicken beyond spreadability.

It did thicken really quickly, almost faster than I could decorate the cupcakes. The tang of the sour cream really went well with these cupcakes.


* I had a little helper over yesterday & we decided to make some chocolate raspberry cupcakes using this same cupcake recipe. This time we left out the cinnamon. We added 1/2 t baking soda & 1 t baking powder instead of the 1 t baking soda. The cupcake rose more this time. They were still quite moist but a little less pudding like.

We used the Perfectly Chocolate Frosting on these.
This will probably be the chocolate cupcake recipe I continue to use because the flavor is so good but with those changes.